How To Support Your Retail Workers This Holiday Season

You may have noticed panicked headlines recently urging shoppers to start their holiday shopping immediately. Supply chain shortages will make a range of products hard to find, from toys to Christmas decorations. Still, industry experts expect holiday sales to increase by 7% from last year.?

For retail business owners, these predictions send a foreboding message: Get ready because this holiday season will be even crazier than usual. Here’s how you can prepare your business and frontline workers for the months ahead.?

Embrace Technology

If you don’t like the idea of your retail workers using cell phones on the sales floor, it’s time to rethink your position. Major retailers started embracing the bring your own device (BYOD) movement these past few years, and smaller businesses need to join them if they want to keep up.

Why has technology become a necessity for retail workers? There are a few factors at play, but part of it comes down to consumers’ attitudes. With so many products available and dozens of online retailers selling similar items, customers want to make sure they’re getting the best product for their money. As a result, your buyers want honest information about the items they’re considering, and technology helps them get it.

When buyers swarm your store on Black Friday to finish their holiday shopping, they’ll have a wealth of information available on their phones. If your sales reps can’t answer their questions, they’ll turn to their own technology. Why not equip your employees with the same tools so they can deliver the customer service experience your buyers want?

Create a Product Knowledge Base

During this busy holiday season, the ability to access support on the sales floor will be crucial. Your employees can’t remember every detail about the thousands of products on your shelves, and they shouldn't feel stranded on the sales floor when customers ask tricky questions. With product knowledge base software, they have a resource immediately available at their fingertips.

Using an app on their mobile devices, your employees can scan a product barcode and pull up reviews, specifications, similar products, pricing information, and tutorials. You can decide what information to include, ensuring your employees have the information they need to address your customer demographic.

Focus on Training

Things work differently in your store during the holiday season. You may have temporary staff filling in during busy periods and promotions you only offer for a few weeks out of the year. Both your new and existing employees need extra resources to keep up with these changes during the holiday season.

It’s not always possible to round up your employees and give them a face-to-face rundown of new policies. What you can do is send training courses to your learning management system (LMS) app and let employees complete them at their own pace. If an employee has to process a sale or issue a gift card with a purchase for the first time, they can pull out their phones and go through each step instead of guessing how it’s supposed to be done.?

Well-trained employees are more confident in their jobs, and they help keep your store running at peak efficiency, even during the most hectic days of the year.

Invest in Software Designed for Retail Workers

There are hundreds of LMS environments on the market that you could buy before the holiday season starts, but only a few were designed just for retail workers. Vizual Trainer is one of them. At FLX Systems, we developed our product knowledge base and training software to address the problems retail workers face on the sales floor.?

Our software could be the key to getting your employees through the upcoming holiday season. Schedule a demo today to see why.